Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1887-09-29

Fathers, Examine the Studies Pursued
by Your Sons-NIental Exercise.

Fathers, Examine the Studies Pursued
by Your Sons-NIental Exercise.
/ have been assured by learned pro-
fessors that the collegiate course is merely
an exercise, useful in forming and strength
ening the mind. Therefore, useless studies
become useful as dumb bells, stiffening
the mental muscles and imparting tone TO
the intelligence. Would not useful studies
and the acquiring of facts needed in the
daily grind to come be equally healthful
to the mind?
Tho most our graduates acquire is
barely a smattering Of each subject.
Why? Merely because ther0is not time
to give each branch of study conscientious
and exhaustive research. 1t may be
asked why, then, the number of studies
is not limited. The answer is simple.
Between the vanity of the parents, who
like to say that their sons are deep in this
abstruse subject or that high sounding
science, and the stubborn conservatism of
the faculty, retaining Eighteenth century
sentiment in this Nineteenth century of
practical life, the course is filled with
tares and there is no room for the wheat.
OF what use are Latin and Greek to the
youth who must soon strip in the strug-
gle for bread? The barest excuse is that
they give an insight into the derivation of
n
as much. Why waste four years in ham
mering verbs and nouns, declensions and
conjugations into boy who is destined
afterward to sell coffee or soap? OF what
| valuable use is French. 1t will take sew
eral years to learn, and the requirement
| is purely ornamental, and in most cases
| not worth dollar to the future man.
Fathers, examine the studies pursued
by your sons. You will find that you are
| spending your money and wasting their
most precious time storing up glittering
| tinsel to the exclusion of what can benefit
them in the sterner days to come. Cast
them adrift upon the sea of life without a
thorough education in some practical sub
| ject of value to the world, and which in
needy hour they may coin into bread, and
| you are casting them adrift in ships OF
lead without a life preserver or spar
aboard. A sunken rock or storm and
they are lost.
II they need mental exercise let them
| iuggle with practical ubjects-mechan-
les, bookkeeping, drawing, practical chem
| istry arithmetic, the English language
| and physics. Let them learn how to keep
accounts, how to handle tools, how to
| build and work an engine, how to detect
adulterations in staples of commerce, how
to understand the machinery of the great
practical world-and not learn the vaga-
ries of the land of dreams.
If you have learned the bent of your
sons mind, confine him strictly to studies
pertaining to his calling and cast all
others away.
Our boys are not fools They know the
uselessness of half the labors imposed
upon them, and, being Americans, resent
the encroaching upon their liberty.
Rather than Latin o. Greek, they take up
the fantasticoes of the poker deck, they
twankle banjo, and are erudite only in
the latest laws appertaining to trousers
or collar. We neglect to give them
weapons to fight the battle, and they be-
come skulkers in the rear. We turn
them loose upon the world with no means
for employment; they reply by becoming
idle and profigate, prematurely wasted
the soul of Saturn in the body of Adonis
crowded from the race for fortune and
fame by striplings of humber life, whose
education ran in narrow lines, but was
sturdy and sharp as an ak to hew their
path.-Henry Guy Carleton in New York
Werld.